Gunsmithing Barrel Making

[Bryan27]

Just out of curiosity, how are cut rifle barrels made these days? I remember reading a while back that barrel making is kind of a black magic type of thing and the equipment to do so is done with old WW2 machines, no new barrel making equipment is being made. I don't know how much truth is in that, but it seems to me that with the CNC machines we have today that there would be something much more up to date to build barrels with. Really, I'd think someone with the know how could cobble together their own simple CNC for cutting the rifling, but I'm not all that savvy when it comes to the CNC world. Lots of people making CNC router tables and plasma tables. Also, how on earth do they drill a hole that small, that deep, through a relatively small diameter peice of bar stock....and keep it relatively straight?

 

[DAVETOOLEY]

Re: Barrel Making

Check out Bartlein. They make cut rifled barrels and have built state of the art equipment capabile of cutting the twist, any twist rate fixed or gain, to four decimal places.

 

[treebasher]

Re: Barrel Making

Couple of good reads for you:

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/barrel_making/making_rifle_barrel.htm

http://www.border-barrels.com/articles/bmart.htm

 

[Bryan27]

Re: Barrel Making

Thanks for the references.

 

[biffj]

Re: Barrel Making

Check out the Lilja barrels website as well. He explains gundrilling and button rifling in a pretty understandable manner.

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/barrel_making.htm

I don't think all the equipment out there is WWII vintage. There is a lot of new stuff.

Frank